Fuck You, Brian K. Vaughn

[sherarara]

You know, I was just starting to really enjoy the Buffy comics. Then the script writer has Willow use the term "Jewess" not only in reference to herself, but as if the word were completely neutral.

I'm utterly seething.

Comments

[m_banu]

Pardon my ignorance. :( Why is Jewess an offensive term when Jew is not?

[m_banu]

I am not. That is an interesting challenge, though... I'm not sure what a gendered form of Caucasian would be... Caucasine? If I understand correctly, the female form of Christian would be Christine (or possibly Christina/Christiana depending on the language you start with), but because it is such a common given name it would probably only cause confusion if used as a gendered description... People would assume you were talking about a group of women named Christine. :)

I suppose I was just surprised that only the gendered version of the word would be offensive, and was hoping for elaboration. For instance, "Negress" is offensive (I'd assume) because Negro offends, while Latina is not offensive (but then neither is Latino).

[sherarara]

'Negress' falls in the same category as 'Jewess'; you're totally right there. 'Latino' and 'Latina' are different because they are borrow words from Spanish that entered because the culture group itself uses them, and furthermore, they come from a gendered language. Jewess and Negress are artificial compounds in a non-gendered language designed to belittle.

And I got a chuckle out of imagining you as female, too :)

[jasongrossman]

I agree that "Jewess" is offensive, but I will defend the writers of Buffy no matter what they do! And especially in this case.

The thing is that they plan an unbelievably long way ahead. Always at least a year. And they assume that the audience is going to follow the whole series, not just one episode or comic or whatever. So in this case I'm pretty sure they'll have been having Willow refer to herself in a demeaning way, in terms of both gender and religion, in order to get a contrast with her later conversion

• to gradually increasing feminism, via lesbianism, and
• away from Judaism, via Wicca.

I know they could have made the point much more explicitly than that. But they like to bury their clues, spacing them out in little interactions. I think that's neat ... and even if it isn't neat, it really is meant to gradually show the audience what's wrong with "Jewess".

Or have I just got rose-tinted glasses? (Nooooo! Don't take my Joss Whedon security blanket away!)

[sherarara]

There are better ways of showing that she's moving away from Judaism and moving toward stronger feminism than using a loaded word, especially if they plan as far in advance as you say. Sure, her language could change as part of her growing self-awareness, but that doesn't excuse the term, especially written as it was - Willow was describing herself as a 'lesbian Jewess', iirc (I'll find the scan and upload it

[jasongrossman]

I didn't know you were referring to season 8, although I did wonder because you said 'comic'. In that case my argument falls apart completely :-/

I'm from veganpeople, sort of indirectly.

[sherarara]

Oh, ok, just curious :)

Sorry, I should have made it clearer that I was only going off on the comic. I was actually very impressed with the way that Joss handled diversity in the show, and really most of everything he's done. The Jewess thing is just a pet peeve, so I tend to rant.